....to not want to give money as a wedding gift?

[LucyLouLou]

Asking on behalf of my sister, I'm wondering what you guys would do?

She has been invited to a wedding at the beginning of next year and the couple are asking for money instead of presents. My sister is not keen on doing this and would prefer something more personal. I gather she is not alone in this, I have heard others say this as well. One of the other guests thinks it's like buying a ticket for the wedding. My sister will comply with the request, but she (and I quote) thinks it's "tacky". I personally like buying gifts from a wedding list, but I get that these days, most couples don't need things like kettles and toasters as they have lived together for some time before getting married. Some people going to this wedding are not going to give money though, not sure what they are going to do, possibly give nothing, I don't know.

Opinions, anyone? TIA .

emptyshell - we didn't have a list either. We also got a few quirky gifts, they're much treasured!

What about people who choose to give nothing? I think the invite says "if you would like to get us something....money...." etc. Is it then rude to not give anything because you don't want to give money?

Why should a B and g get stuck with tacky gifts that get left in the cupboard or given to a charity bin. Weddings are A very expensive time for example my own wedding 3 years ago cost a total of £5500 and that is cheap compared to what some people pay and most of that was on the food. Wedding meal at £30 ahead and 80 guests coming! So we asked people not to give gifts and instead pay for the own meal which worked very well. It doesn't matter how long you spent choosing the "perfect" gift it wont be appreciated because it wasnt want they asked for. It is their day and if people dont like it then they dont have to attend. people paying for their own meal at our wedding really helped us out and because of that we had a fantastic day!

I agree Lucy, I don't like asking people for things either.

But on the other hand, wedding guests generally do give gifts, and IMO it makes life so much easier for them if there is a list. Saves them trying to think of something the couple will definitely like, don't already have, and won't be given by half the other guests. I'm going to 6 weddings this year and if I had to think of a present for each of them it would be a nightmare! Luckily 5 of them have lists.

So for that reason, we had a wedding list - to make life easier for our guests. We did of course make it clear that (a) presents were not remotely expected and (b) they were free to go off-list if they wanted, the list was just for ideas.

krumbockmummy - did it feel tacky asking them to pay for their own meal? Genuinely asking, not being sarcastic. This seems like the ticket comment my sister told me about. If people chose not to buy the meal, did you dis-invite them?

minipie - for me, it's about choice, I like to be able to choose a gift. Wedding lists are just about okay because I can at least choose within limits. I can see it would be difficult repeatedly choosing with so many weddings in a year though!

Minipie thats really cute and quirky

We are actually going to a wedding in a coupke of weeks time. It's my DH's Boss, But we are also quite close friends with them.
They too have requested money instead of gifts, towards honemoon apparantly. Now we don't mind at all giving them what the wish, the problem with us is, how much do you give??

We don't want to seem stingy and chuck £20 in a card (as they are such good friends and are so good to us) But then we don't want to make it seem ott and give too much. After all its going to seem weird giving the cash seeing as they pay DH's wages!!

Btw DH and I had gift vouchers for argos so that we could use them for our ds's Christmas (our wedding was two weeks before christmas)

How much to give is a whole other problem lol! I'm not sure how much my sister is planning on giving at this wedding, will have to ask her and get back to you with this!

Hi Porcelain

We recently did the 2 gift list thing - we had a honeymoon giftlift at buy-our-honeymoon.com (the website for people to look at was honeymoonpromises) where we got pick all the things that we wanted to do on our honeymoon, and people either paid via paypal or brought a cheque, and we also had a small John Lewis giftlist.

We gave the details of both to everyone, and virtually everyone bought off the honeymoon giftlist - there were about 5 people out of 100 that went the for JL list.

Everyone who bought off the honeymoon list said what a great idea it was - because we had specified specific things it was like they were buying a proper gift, even though they were giving us money.

Some people also just gave us cash and some JL gift vouchers

Having had to endure shopping with hb (before we married) for the perfect wedding gift for a friend of his, I came round very quickly to the idea of a gift list!

When we got married, we didn't mention presents on the invite but did a list for those who asked. We also got some lovely off-the-list presents and a lot of cash. So now we are making sure that we spend the cash on specific things and don't just fritter it away.

I don't think you can please everyone though, so you might as well ask for what you need.

Thanks minipie, that was our original plan before I got pregnant (baby will be 10 weeks when we get married), but now we think that we will put off the honeymoon until next summer, or as a last minute thing over Christmas perhaps, we don't want to make any firm plans as baby isn't even here yet! I did think of asking for vouchers from a particular travel agent, but even that might limit us. We were going to go historical sight seeing in Greece or Japan, which we might still do, or we might go off road motorbiking in Wales or something (when LO is old enough to spend the weekend with Grandma)so we can't really make a specific call.

I did find a great online gift list thing that allows you to choose gifts from any online retailer, and collates the list for you in one place, which was very useful, esp if you don't want to go all John Lewis or whatever. We still don't need any "stuff" though, except baby stuff, and you can't really put that on a wedding list.

God I hate the whole wedding present malarky now.
When I got married we didn't ask for anything. If anyone wanted to get us a gift then they were directed to my mum who had a list of things we liked but it was a large variety of things and only the glass and tableware was from a named range.
If I know someone needed money for something then I will send that or send vouchers. But I tend to think the phrase 'we don't need anything' should be followed with 'so don't feel you need to get us anything' rather than 'so some dosh would be nice'.
But I am a gimmer

Do a search for the thread on here a couple of weeks back where everyone on it either put their presents on ebay or gave them to the charity shop as soon as the wrapping was off. People were so dismissive of what people had given them that I was shocked and not very impressed tbh. If you sister is happy for that to happen then fine but remind her that her idea of personal is someone else's idea of an ebay item.

No we didn't dis-invite them! We had the wedding in 3 parts Ceremony, wedding breakfast, and evening party with buffet style food. It was only family and close friends invited to the first 2 parts so every1 was very supportive. We had a 1 yr old at that time and are not very well off so they could under stand but it did take a few rough drafts of how to word it! We did have a wedding list to. I can under stand her ticket comment, and we did have a few that complained but they were gusts that were not married. My cousin was 1 of them, she got married last year she came to me and said she now under stood y we did what we did! Her wedding cost her close to £25000, £60 per head for the meal. We have 80 members of family just on our mothers side!

This is going to sound really mercenry BUT here goes.... we discovered when doing our wedding gift list at John Lewis that you can have the gift but don't have to hae the items - JL will convert into vouchers instead of delivering.

We discovered this because we listed 12 wine glasses and then after the event discovered when we were arranging the delivery that they were actually pairs of glasses - i.e. people had bought us 24 glasses. So we got the lady to 'return' six boxes of two glasses on the computer and got vouchers for them which then went towards our new dishwasher....!

So in theory you could put on 6 or so wine glasses, someone buys them, put on another 6 wine glasses which someone buys but that you never actually take recepit of - i.e. when the time comes you convert them to vouchers. In theory you could do this multiple times - people seemed to love buying us wine glasses!

Then when any of the wine glass buyers come round your house for dinner you can say 'these are the ones you bought us for our wedding' and they can be all happy and you haven't actually told a lie....

I'm with pagwatch on this- I think asking for aaaanything is really tacky and cheeky! DP and I have just said that the guests being there is enough,and it is!
I feel awful that my family and friends might have to go without just so I can have some pretty glassware/new dining table!

This is always a difficult one. We made it very clear that we did not expect anything but at the same time we didn't want the embarrassment of receiving things we simply didn't need or asking for cash. I think we worded it something like. 'your presence at our wedding is gift enough so 'please do not feel that you have to buy us a gift but if you would like to buy us something then we would find vouchers from..... Very useful' we gave a number of places that people could select vouchers from. It is always awkward but I find just asking for cash a bit crass

Oooh I had this happen to me Rockbird, a supposed friend ebayed my gift to her for her wedding day (even though there was no mention about what ppl should give i.e. no wedding list and no word of wanting cash/vouchers)

So there I was thinking the gift I had given was personal and sentimental to our friendship and her special day, and there she was flogging it for a couple of squid

krumbockmummy - I admire your honesty (on the thread and at your wedding!) but I don't think I could ever go that far. I don't mean to offend you, it's JMO, but doing what you did would be so uncomfortable for me.

Well at risk of being flamed or whatever, I can say that we suggested that, if people wanted to give us anything, please could it be money towards our travel plans - because we were going to be emigrating. And because everyone we asked to the wedding knew me very well, knew my house was full of Stuff and that I Was Not Joking when I said we didn't need any more Stuff.

Only one person gave a present; another gave vouchers, which was lovely - and all the rest of the guests either gave time/skills (photography, cars, singing, floor show) or money, amounts ranging from £10 to £100. I thank each and every one of them for their kindness in adhering to my heartfelt wish to not give us any more Stuff.

Harryan that's awful

I really think that people only really want money or vouchers. It might be mercenary but I will never again waste effort in choosing a special gift when all they really want (regardless of what they say) is hard cash.

We included a "no presents just your presence" type of thing on our invites and got a barrage of "yes, that's all very well but what do you want cos we ARE getting you something" phone calls and emails!

Settled on a combo of honeymoon vouchers (had already booked with Thomas Cook) and a small John Lewis list. Younger guests on the whole bought honeymoon tokens, some even gave us cards full of US dollars which was v nice!! Older guests went for the casserole dishes etc and tbh they were great too as I'd never spend money on things like that but now have e.g. half decent pots, and it is nice being able to say to great auntie so-and-so oh your casserole dish is well used!!

krumbock - if you couldn't afford it, you should have had a cheaper wedding.

LucyLouLou That is fine it doesnt offend at all. We could of not had the day we had with out our guests helping out.

We had friends who asked for money as they were moving to a new house and needed big items. We bought them a novelty money box (a campervan just like the one they had travelled around Oz in) and filled it wth pound coins. It was one of very few presents they received and so was really cherished by them and felt like a bit of a compromise on my part.